Precipice
by quantumparadigm
Summary: Shenko AU story, based on an OTP prompt from tumblr. Shepard survived Mindoir. Now she's just suffered through Akuze, and finds carrying on hard. Harder when alone, until someone happens by and offers his words. Simple words that change the world. Trigger warning: suicidal thoughts.


**Long-winded AN:**  
This fic is based on an 'imagineyourotp' prompt on tumblr, and **comes with a trigger warning for suicidal thoughts**. (Spoiler alert, for the sake of anyone suffering through this themselves, this story does not contain suicide.) (Separate aside for anyone experiencing something in a similar vein or just needs someone to talk to, my PM box is always open.)

**Prompt** that inspired this short piece: Imagine your OTP as complete strangers to each other. Person A is about to jump off a bridge/building/other high place, and person B tries to talk them out of it.

Shenko AU story. Shepard is from Mindoir and just survived Akuze, earning the Sole Survivor background. This story is a sort of 'what if' because suffering trauma twice like that would be enough to bring most people to their knees.

Kassandra Black convinced me to post it here (I originally was going to leave it on my blog as a simple drabble). I hope you all enjoy it, despite its somewhat sad tone.

-Precipice-

Hurt. Pain. Loss.

Those were all the words the therapist had used.

_Normal._

Her feelings were _normal_. As if the woman had known her whole life story from having read a piece of paper and could provide sufficiently accurate commentary.

As if Shepard didn't already know that.

She supposed that sitting atop the railing on the Burrard Bridge, contemplating the height and looking out over the black water below her wasn't exactly normal. She couldn't bring herself to leave. Either by one way or the other. She hadn't made up her mind, just knew that her feet had carried her here, tired and broken and some word that meant 'sad' but magnified by a thousand. Her existence so far had constituted total loss, as if she was cursed. Everyone she'd ever cared about was dead.

Family, dead. Killed by batarian slavers on Mindoir. Four little brothers wiped out in the blink of an eye and the pull of a trigger. Parents dead protecting them. Uncle dead avenging them. Cousins dead fleeing.

Yet she survived. Fled the wreckage trying to not let the images of her dead family burn themselves into her mind and failing. Running and tripping through the woods, unsteady fingers clutching a rifle she'd found abandoned at the foot of a corpse in the street. Blood running down her face, seeping into her eyes, mixing with the tears. A warm sun that seemed so at odds with devastation around her, surrounded by signs of life interrupted.

The marines who found her hours later had called her a survivor.

If only she'd know how apt those words would be, that they'd be applied to her again years later, only this time with another word attached to the front: _sole_ survivor.

So while maybe it wasn't _normal_ for her to be sitting atop the railing on the Burrard Bridge in the middle of the night, fog curling around the support beams and wisping over the waters, it was certainly understandable.

Logical, even.

She'd reached her limits. Too much death and loss. Too much pain. Her heart cinched and shut down, crumbling beneath the added weight of further tragedy, still bruised from the previous one. Still bleeding inwardly even if it didn't show externally. Unable to cope.

She shifted on the railing, leaning ever closer to the edge. Oblivion dangled beneath her feet. Calling to her. Promising relief.

"How far down do you suppose it is?"

Shepard jumped, nearly slipping off the railing, and a hand circled around her waist, shimmering blue for the briefest of seconds before fading.

She secured her delicate perch and mumbled, "Thanks."

Unfortunately, her unwanted visitor joined her, silently hoisting himself up onto the rail. He was tall, probably a foot taller than she was. Dark, unruly hair with dark, sincere eyes that examined the incredible view before them. He nodded towards the horizon as he settled himself in. "Vancouver sure does have some beautiful views."

She followed his line of sight. Her point in coming here hadn't been to examine the skyline, but rather to look at the desolate landscape of her life, trying to determine if it was worth it to continue the painting that was made up of so many grays and browns, splattered with red in the way floors are splattered with blood in violent killings. Drops and splotches, seemingly random, yet telling a heart-wrenching story of their own.

But she wanted to see it from his eyes. The eyes of someone who wasn't broken, someone who hadn't just lost everything for the second time. Someone who could see tomorrow and not be afraid of it.

Perhaps that spoke of some desire to see her painting through to its natural end and not an untimely one.

She stared at the buildings, light glittering in the windows. Life reflecting off the surface of the city so much it blinded her, wrenching a quiet sob from the depths of her soul. How life could carry on when hers had shattered tortured her.

"Even prettier when the fog starts skirting around the buildings, hiding the details and shadows. Especially when there's a full moon," he continued. She glanced at him and he glanced at her, smiling. A genuine smile. Soft and small, but with real warmth behind it. A ghost of a smile passed her lips and she tore her gaze away.

He didn't seem to mind that she hadn't said anything other than, 'thanks.'

"When I was 17, I killed someone."

Startled, she looked at him again. He'd said it so quietly, so softly, she almost hadn't heard. His voice had gone huskier, lower. The register of someone confessing, baring their soul to another. He continued looking at the skyline.

"For love. For justice. Because I'd been thrust to the edge and just snapped."

She continued looking at him, but he'd fallen into a contemplative silence that managed to feel companionable. "Everyone has a breaking point," she replied.

He nodded. "Yeah, and I guess I'd reached mine. I was at a special school for biotics. BAaT. You heard of it?"

"Yeah."

He shrugged slightly. "Our teacher was a turian named Vyrnnus. Really vicious. Cruel. Took pleasure in forcing us to our limits just to see what we could do. Two years of hell before I found mine."

Shepard wasn't sure what to say in response to that. A quiet confession in the cold night on a bridge, hanging in the open air between them, hovering over the void ahead of them. She felt an echo of misery flare in her heart at his open admission, the desire to reach out and seek human contact, even if it was fleeting.

So she bumped her shoulder awkwardly against his and he bumped hers back, using that moment to scoot closer, closing the space between them that had been bridged with his words.

"Life can be really shit sometimes," he said. "But it can be beautiful, too."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Just in all the little things. A cup of coffee. Setting foot on a new planet. Watching the sunrise." He looked at her, eyes sincere and honest. Open. "Sitting with someone on a bridge when the bad seems to outweigh the good, and they're trying to make a choice."

Tears welled in her eyes and she tore her gaze away once more, unable to keep looking at him, whether from shame or cowardice, she didn't know. His hand found hers and squeezed gently, reassuringly.

It hurt. It bit and scratched and lacerated, screaming in her face, her ears, her soul. It hurt a lot and the pain was overwhelming, crushing.

Fifty faces she would never see again, on top of the family she'd already lost. A unit was like a family. Drank together, traded watches, cleaned each others' guns and had each others' backs. Wading through mud and taking crap posts.

Was she cursed to always be alone? To have those she loved ripped away from her? Certainly felt that way.

But then, she wasn't alone right now, was she? Some stranger had waded into her life of misery and tragedy and unspeakable terrors without fear. Without judgment. And he'd told her a story. His story.

So she sucked in a breath, rubbed at her eyes, and squeezed his hand to solidify reality. "When I was 16 my whole family was murdered. Mindoir. Four brothers, parents, uncle, cousins. Everyone I ever knew. Gone in one night, and my whole life was changed. They called me a survivor."

She could feel his eyes still on her, but couldn't meet his gaze. Too afraid she'd lose it before she finished speaking. "I did. I survived. Started living again. Joined the Alliance. They called me focused and praised it." She exhaled, breath shaky. "A week ago my whole unit was wiped out on Akuze."

His fingers contracted sharply around hers and she choked back a broken sob, the floodgate threatening to break under the pressure.

Then it _did._

But _he_ was there, changing her hand from his left to the right, wrapping his newly freed arm around her and tucking her head beneath his chin. Still not judging as she cried into him, not demeaning her for baring her soul and all the pain contained therein in one outburst of emotion. Just silently holding her against him and letting the solid feel of him center her so she wouldn't lose herself in the sea of unimaginable grief where the faces of family members and squad-mates lingered alike, tormenting her because she lived while they had died.

He let her cry for what felt like hours but was only half of one. She felt dry, worn, ragged. It still hurt, and the pain was still sharp, but she no longer felt like she was drowning. The sea still tugged at her feet, gripping her arms, but, as unlikely as it seemed, she'd found a buoy to keep her afloat one more day. Maybe for more days.

She pulled away, somewhat embarrassed but mostly relieved, feeling as if a great pressure that had been building within her had finally found release unexpectedly, on a bridge she'd chosen for the view she wanted to appreciate but couldn't see because of her inner demons.

He offered her his sleeve. "Tissue?"

She accepted his proffered arm with only a small degree of hesitation, because he was being genuine and somehow that made it not matter that she was wiping tears and snot on his shirt, with his help and gentle touch.

A huge sigh escaped her lips as he pulled his arm away, the last vestiges of the downpour of emotion ebbing away. The final wave that struggles to push as far inland as it can even though the tide has pulled back, clearing the beach.

She met his eyes after regaining some semblance of composure, feeling a little shy and a lot broken, but as if there was hope for better days to come. "Do you want to watch the sunrise with me?"

He smiled warmly at her.

They sat there together, feet dangling over the edge, her head on his shoulder and his head on hers, living in one beautiful moment of one soul reaching out to another when the night had seemed impossibly dark and lonely, waiting to experience another.


End file.
